How To Overcome Perfectionism

Nobody’s perfect Does the pursuit of high standards make artists improve, or does it weigh them down? Dom Carter investigates

When it comes to creating art, there’s a distinction to be made between a ‘perfect’ image and one that’s ‘complete’. A piece of work can be said to be complete for a number of reasons: for example, it fits a role for a client or explores a technique that an artist wanted to experiment with.

Achieving perfection, on the other hand, is invariably more demanding and time-consuming. That’s because perfect art has to live up to the expectations of perhaps the toughest critic: the creator themselves. For Atlanta-basesd illustrator Nuri Durr, the desire for perfectionism became not only an obsession, but a hindrance to his growth as an artist. And it turns out that he wasn’t alone.

A DANGEROUS OBSESSION

Taking to Twitter, Nuri recently shared his struggles with perfectionism, and how completing work instead was much more gratifying. His followers agreed, and at the time of writing Nuri’s tweet has racked up nearly 5,000 likes and dozens of comments from other artists dealing with the same predicament. But for Nuri, the response didn’t come as much of a surprise. “I’ve always felt that perfectionism was a thing that most people tend to struggle with,” he says.

“It’s difficult to talk about, because we all want to present the best version of ourselves. There’s this feeling that every piece of work has to be better than the last one, or at least match it, which is just not true. I think everyone hits this wall at one point or another. It’s not always vocalised though, so it’s important that we have these types of conversations.”